


Shadows; not substantial things

by Wallyallens



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post 2x01, RipFic, Time Canary, prompts, sara missing rip during s2, timecanary prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 17:24:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8676199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallyallens/pseuds/Wallyallens
Summary: Prompt from tatjash on tumblr: "Rip don't wear his coat when he is gone (I'm surprised that no one has noticed that detail). I thought that Sara can find the Rip's coat and she feels a little emotional." which I took and totally extended to '5 times Sara missed Rip in his office + 1 time he came back". Sara missing Rip during s2.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tatjash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tatjash/gifts).



For three days, Rip’s office was a phantom zone; once his image faded, no one wanted to cross the threshold of the one place on the ship that was undeniably _his_. Rip’s influence was stamped into every object, every book, and every stitch in the fabric of the room. He was almost tangible there. Every time a member of the crew passed, their eyes would inadvertently sway to the darkened office, standing empty as a shrine, as a grave – no one stayed for long, and there was an unspoken silence as they passed it, like children holding their breath in car rides past graveyards.

On the third day, Sara decided that enough was enough and entered the office.

“Hi,” she said to the empty room, fighting the urge to turn around and leave again. It felt oddly wrong to be there, a twist in her gut, but Rip was – he was _gone_ , and she needed the space to think and plan now she was leading. It wasn’t until she stood before his desk that she realised it was hers now, and wasn’t sure why she felt so hollow at the thought, when she had been half-excited, half-victorious to be leading before.

Sensing her, Gideon turned on the lights, which buzzed up from dim to bright, filling the room with soft light. Everywhere else on the ship, the lighting was artificial white light, harsh and bright. Whether Rip had programmed it that way, Sara didn’t know, but the light in his office had always been noticeably different, orange and softer, fitting the brown colour scheme of the room. It glimmered into life, the light striking the metal instruments on Rip’s desk and the shelves, things she couldn’t even put a name to, let alone tell what they were used for.

She smiled a little, picking one up and testing the weight in her hand. It was small, curved, and she figured that even if she had no clue what it was actually for, she could make a decent enough weapon out of it if she ever needed to. It had enough weight for a good whack. Tossing it up, she caught it, returning it to the desk fondly. As her fingers slid from the smooth metal, landing on the rutted wooden desk, she leaned against it with both her arms, eyes fluttering shut as she took a steadying breath.

With the rise and fall of her chest came the smell of the room: the musty smell of old books, the leather of his armchair, ink and metal and the whisky in his liquor cabinet, an opened bottle still on his desk and perfuming the space with the heavy smell of alcohol beginning to turn bad; she breathed in candle wax and the detergent he used on that coat of his; the room smelled like a grand old library.

Impossibly, she caught the scent of a wood fire mingled with pine needles; it was ridiculous of course, there was no fire in the room, but she could still taste the smoke on her tongue and smell the afterburn in the air, and could hear the imagined pop and crack and gentle sigh of the fire in her mind. It was clear in her imagination, memories of being at camp as a girl surging at the smell, the trigger taking her back to being seven and missing home beside the fire, before she looked up and saw the faintly glimmering stars through the looming shadows of the trees that enclosed the fragile light, until she saw the moon and knew that somewhere, the same moon was watching over Laurel and her parents. It had been a moment of peace, being the last one awake beside the fire and thinking of home; vaguely, she wondered if Rip had a memory like that, to choose the smell so specifically.

Then, a more intrusive thought followed on from that, and she wondered just how much Rip had modified this particular room to his tastes through the years.

Her eyes opened, letting the memory fade as she became accustomed to the faint smell, dissolving into the background of her senses and tucking itself there, spreading warmth through her chest all the same. Sara thought she would not change the smell, at least. Impulsively, she tore through the room in a blur.

Not knowing why she was doing it, she touched everything in the room: lighting the four candles on a candelabra, flicking on every lamp to fill the room with more light, snatching fistfuls of scrolls stacked in the corner and hearing the satisfying crinkle of paper in her hands. On a mission now, Sara searched the shelves until she found the book she thought looked most loved and thumbed through. She put that one to her nose and inhaled deeply, the smell of printed ink and the pages of an old book filling her lungs. It smelled _good_. There was a smile on her face as she searched through the drawers of his desk, finding that old silver pocket watch inside one, taking it out gently and opening it; Jonas’ face still smiled from inside, the picture fading slightly with time, but the watch was still wound and ticked calmly in her palm. She clenched it in her fist, wrapping the cold chain three times around her hand to keep it there, and the tiny heart beat ticked happily, the sound singing to her as she continued in her hurricane around the room.

Then she got to Rip’s old-fashioned record player, a great coned shape which looked fifty years old and was entirely useless, as she knew full well that Gideon had all recorded music stored in her databases and probably produced better sound quality. With his old fashioned gun and old fashioned furniture and old fashioned sense of morality, she supposed that was just Rip’s style. He was utterly timeless.

There was a record already in the player, the last thing he had listened to, and Sara set the needle to play, and chuckled softly when _walkin’ after midnight_ began blaring a moment later.

It was such a predictable song for him, the man who played songs sixty years old too-late to be fashionable, and had a head stuck in the past. It was a sad song that seemed to sink down to her bones but sounded happy as it rang out, until her hips swung to the tune, half-remembering the words from having heard it on country radio stations or her dad’s oldies records, singing along as best she could. Sara’s voice was out of tune, half of the words she sang wrong, but she laughed loudly as she sang anyway, not giving a damn.

“I’m always walkin’ after midnight, searching for youuuu,” Sara sang along, layered over the high female voice she couldn’t put a name to crackling from the gramophone, throwing her arms wide as she spun on her toes, dancing across the space ungracefully but freely.

The old rock and roll tune played on as she set the globe swinging with a wild swipe of her hand, the earth spinning on its axis and rattling on its hinges loudly.

It was as she spun it, turning, that she froze; the lights dimmed and the music fell silent, as she noticed Rip’s coat hanging by the door. In a dream, Sara walked towards it. None of them had noticed it there, just inside the doorway on the coat-stand, half hidden by several hats and an old blue scarf, but it had caught her eye now, and the next thing she knew, Sara was taking it tenderly from the hook. It was just a coat. Rationally, she knew that. But at the same time; it wasn’t. In her every memory of him, Rip wore that coat, as he had almost every day; it was as woven into the memory of him as his scruff of a beard, or the low cadence of his voice, the clipped way he pronounced her name as he called her “Miss Lance”, and the rare smile he bestowed upon her, a tired but gentle quirk of his lips. The coat was as much a part of Rip as any of him, more so in fact, and it called to her. It wanted to be remembered. The weight of the coat slipped into her hands, as Sara’s fists balled into the brown fabric, simultaneously soft and yet bumpy from over-washing underneath her fingers. Dazed, she turned slowly with the coat in her hands, the room swelling back into focus.

The song was still playing, and the globe was still chugging it’s course; the room was still orange and brown and tasted of smoke, and she let it all fill her as she stood facing his desk, the ticking watch was still tied to her hand beneath the folds of the coat, the desk in front of her again now – all of his office before her, this little kingdom of Rip Hunter’s.

Slowly, Sara brought the coat closer, hugging it close to her chest as she pulled it up to her face. As she breathed in, her eyes closed, able to imagine the warmth of Rip in the coat as she breathed in his scent; old coffee, leather, soap and books, so much like the room around her, but carrying just a hint of the cologne she knew he wore on special occasions. All of it together – the office and the coat – it made a puzzle of a man she had been sure was the one constant thing on this ship.

And now he was gone, too.

Sara opened her eyes, prickling with tears, to blink them away. Looking around her, the thought of changing anything at all was daunting – the office smelled of Rip; its contents were unfailingly his, from his devices to the yellowed poster of his old friend Jonah on the wall, to his books, his hat on the coat stand, the dent of his body worn into the armchair - his _thoughts_ and _feelings_ and _memories_. Rip’s heart and soul. Being on the Waverider without their captain was hard enough, as while for the rest of them, the ship was a place to rest of work, it had been Rip’s _home_ – his only home, now Miranda and Jonas were gone - but being in a room that was so pressingly _his_ was almost unbearable.

It was the man, wrapped into the room, so strongly that if she stood there, breathing in the smell of his coat in her hands and feeling the ticking heart of his silver pocket watch beating against her palm, hearing his music fill the room which gleamed and glinted like sunlight over water, she thought that all she would have to do was turn and Rip would just _be there_.

He had to be. She needed him to be.

There, standing in the shadow of him, where his hologram had stood and faded, breathing him in with her every breath, almost able to hear his voice behind her, complaining about someone leaving crumbs on the console again or Mick playing music at 3am or Ray filching technology from the ship to incorporate into his ATOM suit, Sara could almost convince herself it was true. She could almost feel his breath on the back of her head, against her hair, as he strode past her as he spoke to take his seat, and everything would be right in the world again. All of her senses deceived her, for a hopeful, fleeting second, that all she had to do was turn around.

Sara did.

Rip wasn’t there.

*

“Gideon,” Sara said aloud. She was sitting in the pilot’s chair, quite alone, the rest of the crew long-asleep in their rooms. “Do you know where Rip is?”

The ship’s AI replied in its normal, even voice, seeming to come from everywhere at once. “I don’t understand, Captain Lance.”

Sara smiled softly. ‘Captain Lance’. She liked the sound of that out loud more than she’d admit to anyone.

“Neither do I, Gideon,” she said instead, shaking her head. “Neither do I. Because _why_ would he just vanish? If he was out there, he should have found a way to reach out to us by now. Hell, he could have just written his name in giant forty-foot letters and by our time, it would be some kind of ancient monument or mystery, and we’d be able to find him. But there’s nothing. Not a trace.” Sara blinked back into the room, sighing gently. “I just thought that out of everyone, you knew him best. I thought he might have told you where he would go to hide, Gideon.”

“I’m afraid not, Captain Lance,” Gideon said. It was easy to forget Gideon was an AI, sometimes. The computer spoke with such an absence for their missing captain, with such grief – it made Sara feel like she wasn’t alone in missing him. “I could search the timeline for discrepancies again, if that is your request?”

“Sure,” Sara smiled without warmth, gesturing with her hand. “What have we got to lose by looking? He’s already gone.”

Gideon found nothing, just like all the other times. It was beginning to feel dull, now, each time they met a brick wall when it came to finding Rip, like a knife sliding through her ribs after a punch. She didn’t feel it, but damage was being done all the same. She was beginning to lose hope.

“Gideon, tell me about Rip. You were there, in the end. What happened?”

“Captain Hunter put Mr. Rory in stasis. Then he made his recording. Unfortunately, after that my databases were corrupted by the nuclear device hitting us. I have gaps in my hard-drive. I do not know what happened to him.”

“But . . .” Sara fought down frustration at that fact, but the pit that welled up in her stomach had nothing to do with Gideon’s lost memory; something more pressing knawed at her insides. A question she didn’t really want to know the answer to, that would do her no good to know, but she had to ask. “What was he . . . what did he say? Was he scared?”

“No, Captain Lance. I don’t believe he was,” Gideon replied. “His heart rate showed spikes according to the turbulence, but they were within the expected parameters of the stress-levels of the situation. He did not appear afraid.” Inwardly, Sara breathed a sigh of relief at that. It had been awful, the idea lodged in her mind that whatever happened to Rip, he had been scared and alone –

“Gideon, was Rip alone when it happened?”

“No,” Gideon replied, the AI’s voice strangely distorted, as though emotion. “I was with him until the end, Captain Lance. He was not alone. I was here.”

“Good. That’s good, Gideon,” Sara replied, getting to her feet to push away the dark thoughts on the edge of her mind, shaking her head to clear it. Some people would call Gideon a computer, and think that her presence meant nothing, that it was not the same as being with people. But the Waverider was Rip’s home; Gideon was like his family, and Sara knew that Gideon being there would have made all the difference in the world, to him. “I . . . thank you.”

“It was my honour, Captain Lance.”

“I would have stayed with him, you know. If he’d have asked. I’d have stayed with him ‘til the end.”

Sara didn’t know why she said that; Gideon was not judgemental, or even really a person, but she felt an immense shift in her conscience at saying it aloud. Feeling relieved, Sara left, going to find Jax or Ray. Fixing Gideon’s hard-drive could provide crucial to finding Rip. It was a start, at least. Even if it yielded no results, it would feel better than doing nothing – so she walked off with purpose, heels striking the metal grating.

It wasn’t until she was gone that Gideon replied to an empty room. “Yes, Captain Lance. I believe you would have.”

*

Sara crashed into the office, biting down a scream. As had become her natural state, she threw herself at the table, bracing her palms against it and holding onto the sides until her knuckles were white, desperate to anchor herself to the moment. Half blind with anger and guilt, she stood there, breathing heavy and gasping away dark thoughts every few seconds, fighting away the tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks.

“No,” she gasped, turning one hand into a fist and slamming it onto the desk so hard everything on it jolted and shuddered with the impact, metal tinkling against the wood. “No, no, no, no-”

She was working herself up to hysterics, the word becoming more urgent and loud in her throat as if her insistence on it could make it true. It was a desperate attempt to distance herself from the world, while her body fought to stay present and not lapse into the ease of raging and tearing things apart. And Sara wanted to make somebody _hurt_.

Amaya had been injured badly on a mission. Currently, she was in the med-bay, being seen to by Stein and Ray; Mick in the bed beside her, black and blue with the beating he’d taken trying to get them both out of there. When Sara had got there, Amaya had been covered in so much blood it was hard to even see the yellow of her costume through it, unmoving on the floor where she lay, unresponsive to the sound of her name.

“I hate this, I _hate_ this,” she switched to murmuring, running one hand through her hair. They had been hurt on _her_ orders. That was all Sara could think about. They could die – and it would be her fault. “No, they’re fine, they’re fine, they’re fine, they _have_ to be fine-”

Her words were becoming steadily more frantic. Sara knew death intimately: she had seen it, she had caused it, she had come back from it. But there was a difference between killing people and causing the deaths of the people you cared about; it dug into her sides like a knife and twisted, leaving her hyperventilating in the empty office, thinking of how the ship would feel with another two empty rooms.

Sara swore loudly. Grabbing onto the nearest object, which turned out to be a very large antique hourglass, she turned and threw it as hard as she could at the ground. It fell; it broke. Shattered into a thousand pieces on the design of a compass stretching out across the floor, the glass breaking loudly as it scattered, the wood of the hourglass thudding before it rolled half a pace, it broke satisfyingly. Where the hourglass lay, it began to pour out sand onto the floor.

The desire to destroy when hurting was an entirely human invention.

Because she felt hollow, because emptiness threatened her, Sara wanted to burn out and rage against the world, to grab everything in sight and smash it as she had the hour glass, to upturn every piece of furniture in the office until she stood in its ruins. It would make nothing better, but the momentary satisfaction at seeing something taken beyond repair and knowing it was out of her hands tempted her more than she cared to admit.

Sara liked being the leader, but she didn’t like how this felt.

Like the hourglass in front of her, Sara fractured, falling to her knees in front of it. It was wholly beyond repair. It had been in the office as long as she could remember, one of Rip’s many seemingly useless oddities, but she felt a new wave of guilt for breaking it. It brought her thoughts right back to the still-missing member of their team.

“How did you do this?” she said quietly, looking at the broken hourglass and speaking to thin air. Of course, no one answered. There was no one there. There never was.

Thinking to clean up the mess she had made, Sara reached out to grab the hourglass – flinching suddenly back as a shard of glass sliced into her clumsily placed palm. A gasp escaped her as she pulled her hand back to her chest, finding the scarlet curve pierced there, a rivulet of blood falling onto the sand below, perfect orbs. Sara leaned back, fighting emotion.

As time passed out of the broken hourglass, mingled with her blood, she was all too aware that it was doing the same outside the Waverider. The speedster attacking the timeline was escalating, Darkh lived, and Rip’s chances of being found alive dropped day by day. The sand kept spilling out as she stood, leaving to find something to stop the bleeding until the med-bay was free, blood and sand running free in the empty office, and Sara wondered if its owner would ever return to it again.

*

“ _History is yours now, my dear legends_ ,” the recording said. “ _Good luck_.”

Although an imitation of life, there was no way to confuse it with the real man. It spoke like Rip, moved like Rip, carried his essence – but it was just that, an insubstantial reflection of something so much greater. The recording breathed, but no air entered the room. It had a visible form; but not a solid one, nor did it give out any warmth. It moved, but if Sara stood before it, he would have walked right through her – reaching out a hand distorted the image, which cracked at the edges until she stepped back. It was empty and translucent and lifeless, despite what hope it was supposed to provide: Rip wasn’t there, he was probably dead, and so when he spoke to them, it echoed lifelessly around the office and the blue hue turned the room cold.

Because a recording could capture a moment, a fleeting instant, a message; but it could never contain the mind and the soul and the roaring heart of Rip Hunter.

It could never be him, not really. Not all that he was. That was too much to hold, a soul that shone as brightly and burned as hot as the stars they travelled; because how do you capture all that emotion? How do you bottle the courage to go on after the ones you loved had gone? How do you put all that rage in a cage? How could such an infallible _goodness_ be held in an image? How do you capture the heat of the captain’s gaze or his gentleness or his love?

The simple answer was that you couldn’t, and so watching the recording remained unsatisfying.

Sara wished she knew why she kept watching it. It had started when she moved into the office, thinking that maybe there was a hidden meaning behind Rip’s words, something that would lead them right to him that they had missed the first time – she analysed his blinks, his breathing, his fingers, looking for some code. She thought about the words themselves, writing them down and trying to decipher a code within them. She did everything she had been taught, everything she knew, searching for this thunderstruck moment where it would all make sense, and Rip would be a time jump away. But there was nothing. She had accepted that within the first ten times watching the message through.

After that, it had become a habit she couldn’t fall out of. Kind of like him, really; standing by his side because what else was there to do? Who else would? Rip needed her. She needed him. He gave her shaking, blood-stained hands purpose, and Sara saw him get better and learn to care again through their time together, as he found the heart he’d tried to keep cold.

Exhausted, Sara would sit in the chair at his desk for a while, eyes jumping up to the empty space the hologram would fill every few minutes, unable to focus on whatever lead they were chasing that day, until she gave up and put the recording on. She’d sit in the chair by the door which still held the dent in the leather he had made doing the exact same thing, spending hours watching the message from his family and driving himself deeper into the despair that seemed to hold him at times, and Sara would watch Rip’s final message to them, over and over. There was nothing to be learned. There was nothing to be gained. And yet Sara kept coming back to it, watching it, falling asleep in that chair to the recording on a loop.

She wondered if this was how he felt, sitting there in the darkness lit only by the hologram itself, fragile light from a fractured image, torturing herself with memories she had no control over to make right. Because it felt like the world was wrong, Rip not being there. He _should_ be there. Sara watched the message until her red-rimmed eyes fell and did not open again, thinking it was madness to do this, trying to fill the empty space with this hollow imitation.

Because how could an image ever live up to the man? How could a minute encapsulate his life? It was a cracked reflection, a poorly rendered painting, a murky memory, a shadow of a man she had cared about, who cared about her, and that no hologram could ever replace; it was an unsubstantial thing, but it was all she had of him. How could a recording ever replace a friend? Replace a constant in her life, a what-if, a thought she hadn’t even fully understood when he was snatched from her? How could a hazy blue image bring Rip back to life?

It couldn’t, it couldn’t, it couldn’t.

Sara heaved a sob, sitting in the chair, her knees tucked up to her chin, and put her hands over her eyes until they had stopped burning. In the darkness of her cupped fingers, Rip’s voice continued to ring out, almost tricking her into believing he was there again. It would be so easy to believe for a while. But Sara steadied her breathing, opened her eyes, and there was only the recording in front of her, looking slightly away from her, speaking to no one.

Rip wouldn’t have wanted this, she knew. The purpose of his message was to make them move forward – faintly, a memory flashed before her. Rip was closer in the memory, real, firm under her hands; _there_. He was holding her as they lazily span on the dancefloor, his voice in her ear as his breath pushed the air around it, the warmth of his hand on her waist. “ _The truth of our existence is that we are blessed and cursed with the desire to move forward. To live the next day. To get better.”_ The words had stuck with her, through all the months she had known him, as she had seen him live this creed through his actions.

Rip _had_ gotten better. He had been so broken, back at the start. Holding himself at arm’s length. Prepared to drop the team at any moment. Hurting and hurting others because at least then he was feeling something other than empty. She had seen it, and recognised it, having felt adrift in grief the same way herself many times before. That man had been like the hologram before her; a shell of the man he truly was, having his heart chipped and chipped away by the world until there was little left. Then, as she watched, he had put himself back together.

Sara liked to think she played a part in that journey, from standing up to Rip until he realised his errors, so he came back for her in Star City in 2046; until he cared about the future again, knowing that he had a future. That it didn’t have to just be misery and grief – that someday, there would be something better again, something worth living each day to reach.

Rip had never stopped moving forward. Every day, it had stayed with him, the shadow of grief, but it had lessened it’s hold on him as time passed, and he moved out into the light again. Rip had begun to smile, really smile, the kind of look that encompassed his whole face with life and joy, and that had startled her quite a bit, the first time she had seen it. All of Rip’s sharp edges faded when he smiled. He looked carefree, and happy, and handsome. It had been a good day, seeing it; it had been three months before his disappearance, and since then he had gone from strength to strength.

Move forward, he had said. Live each day. Get better.

He would not have left the message, had he known she would have done this, and lost so much time agonising over it. Rip would not have wanted her in the same darkness he had gotten quite lost in. Sara knew this. Sara felt it, looking around his office and seeing both loneliness and hope, but it was so hard to let it – to let _him_ – go. The recording was not the man, not by far, but she felt her burdens lighten on some nights, at the look of his face.

Slowly, Sara reached out and turned the recording off.

She would not waste her life in front of a lie. Sometimes, Rip’s image could give her strength, but to find him, not to wallow in his loss. He was out there. She would know if he were gone, she was sure, she would _feel_ it - so for now, he was just lost. And that meant she could find him.

She would find him.

“Goodnight, Rip,” Sara said to the empty office, turning on a lamp light as she left, just in case he came home while she was asleep. She wanted him to be able to see the way.

*

“Jonah?” Sara asked, curiosity creeping into her tone. She received a grunt in reply, which she took as an invite to finish the question. “Were you in love with Rip?”

There was a silence. When Sara dared to look up, Jonah was staring at her, but his gaze wasn’t defensive. Instead, it tested the waters, scrutinising her expression for a moment, before he slowly nodded.

“Yeah. Reckon I was.”

She tried to keep her tone casual, thumb tracing the rim of her bottle, a low note piercing the air and reverberating between them. “How did you know?”

“Well, I think sharing his bed every night in Calvert may’ve had something to do with it,” Jonah deadpanned, and Sara would have choked on her drink at having her suspicions about the nature of their relationship confirmed, if she was actually drinking it instead of using the bottle as a distraction. She made a mental note that whatever happened, when Rip came back, she was going to high-five him for getting the hot cowboy. When she looked quickly up at him, there was almost a challenging smile on Jonah’s lips. “I told you: me and Rip go way back. We were together, for a time. I probably been lovin’ him all these years wandering about on my own, too . . . but that’s not what you really want to know, is it?”

Sara shook her head. Moving her eyes from the bottle to Jonah’s dark, intense gaze, she asked. “What did it _feel_ like, being in love with him?”

“I suppose the best way to describe it is how I felt when you told me he was missing,” replied Jonah, eyes shining with honestly now. The laughter fled his face. “It felt like a punch to the gut. Like all the sound drained from the world, like when even the birds stop singin’ before a storm rolls in. It was the way my heart missed a beat at the news. I felt sick, I _ached_ for missin’ him, standing there where he had . . . where I’d seen him again after all those years, the last time around.” Jonah’s body copied his slack face, as his hand fell to his lap as he sat on the crate, drink apparently forgotten in his palm. For a moment, his gaze followed suit as he looked down at it, away from her, like he had revealed too much; but when he did look at Sara again, his burning eyes fiercely loving, despite being filled with grief. “I guess it felt like I had lost something important, a part of myself, and before anything else, I thought _I have to get him back_. Because that’s what bein’ in love is, by my count. It’s not giving up.”

For a long time, Sara said nothing. She sipped her drink, the alcohol burning pleasantly as it slipped down her throat, mulling Jonah’s words over in her mind. He did the same. In a companionable silence, they sat and drank, both brimming with memories but neither wanting to break the silence, until finally, Sara lifted her eyes to his once more.

“If that’s what it feels like,” she mused quietly. “Then I think I must have been in love with him, too.”

Jonah nodded, a knowing look on his face. He lifted his bottle in toast, adding, “Tell him that when you find him. Don’t wait until it’s too late.”

“And you?” she asked, after drinking heartily. The cargo bay was beginning the shift and hum around her. Half-drunk and earnest, Sara leaned over, “Are you going to tell him that you still love him?”

“Not on your life,” Jonah chuckled. “I never make the first move, and besides – he already knows. Rip and I had our time, a long time ago, and we were happy, for a while. I have those memories. He knows where I am, if he ever wants that time back.”

Not long after, Jonah left.

Their bottles clinked, now empty, as Sara took his to throw away, tapping against each other in her hand as he stood to say his goodbyes, shaking her free one a moment later. It was easy to see what Rip had liked about him. For all of his old-fashioned ideologies and comments that didn’t seem thought through at all, Jonah was a man capable of immense change and progress, who above all else, tried to fight the good fight. He was a breath of Old West air, like some old action hero, and Sara was sad to see him go.

In a way, he reminded her of Rip: that innate, ingrained battle in him to get up and fight, and _keep fighting_ , and never to stop until he went down for good. The fire which flamed and sparked in Rip’s gut, the one that she felt in her own, too, saying _get up_ every time she was knocked down. Kindred spirits. That is what most people would call them: she saw herself in Rip, and understood him better for it. No matter what changed, if the Waverider became emptier as people left them or grew in numbers, she was tied to the fight alongside him, because it was in her blood, and this was the life she had chosen for herself.

She supposed both of their endings were pre-destined to be bloody and tragic, with lives like that.

Sara closed the doors, shutting off all sights of Jonah disappearing back into the desert, swallowed up by sand as if he hadn’t been there at all, and walked back inside. It was time to find her team. They had work to do, with Rip or without. She had to keep moving forward.

*

The sound of her name woke Sara. Stirring, she was quick to wake as usual; she became quickly aware of Rip’s voice, and something warm covering her, blinking to find his coat over her as a blanket, having fallen asleep watching his message again. She really hadn’t meant to that time. It had just been a long, long day, and the team had been in danger under her command again, so she wanted to see eyes that understood the weight that carried.

Watching Rip’s message had just been an idea to make her feel less alone in that position of authority, having poured herself a glass of his expensive whiskey and slumped in his chair, comforted by the weakening smell of him on the coat; one drink had become many. She must have fallen asleep at some point, because the team was surrounding her now, their expressions a wide range all spelling out concern.

Jax had been the one calling her name, his hand just above her shoulder, like he had been about to shake her. Seeing her eyes snap open, he stepped away, quickly looking down, embarrassed. Not liking how this looked, Sara stood quickly, shoving the coat behind her onto the chair in a poor attempted to hide it, smoothing her hair with her hand as she moved past her team. Slamming off the recording more violently than she should have, Sara stood by the table and took a deep breath before she turned to face them all.

“Can I help you?” she asked, nonchalance on the edge of desperation, crossing her arms. “What’s up?”

No one seemed to want to be the first to talk. The team glanced nervously between each other, very pointedly not meeting her raised eyebrow, until Bull met China Shop, and Mick opened his mouth.

“You’re actin’ like _him_ ,” Mick said bluntly, “And these morons think we need to do something about it, so here we are.”

“What means to say, more delicately, is that we were worried about you,” Stein elaborated, his hands laced together before him. Managing to look diplomatic, eyes sympathetic behind his glasses, there was also an accusation in his words as he gestured around the team. “We _all_ are. Mr. Rory included. It’s not healthy to keep watching that recording, Sara. You saw . . . we all saw what it did to Rip, torturing himself in here. It drove him to distraction.”

“I . . .” Sara protested weakly, trying to think of something to say. A spike of indignation turned her confusion into a pout, then into a frown; finding herself angry in a way she hadn’t anticipated, she threw her arms aside, taking a few steps towards them. “I’m fine. I don’t need any of you looking after me. And – and I don’t consider acting like Rip to be an _insult_.”

The last part she said quite quickly, spitting the words out, hurt on his behalf more than her own. But more than anything, it was an uncomfortable feeling that people thought she needed to be watched, or helped, that was turning her stomach. She had been through a lot more than any of them, and what right did they have to question how she coped with it?

Sara felt defensive again, because they were all giving her that god-damn sympathetic look again; she didn’t want it. “He was our captain! I’m allowed to _miss_ him-”

“I don’t think that’s what they mean,” Nate said. Although his face was earnest, glancing back at the team nervously, he was oddly casual about it when he spoke again. “I haven’t been here long, but from what I can tell – you’re a better captain than this _Captain Hunter_ ever was. The team just want to make sure that it’s _Sara Lance_ who’s leading them, not the ghost of a dead man-”

“He’s _not_ dead!” Sara shouted, the bite in her voice vicious as she wheeled on Nate. Pale-faced, he stumbled back a few steps in her furious wake, Sara’s breaths coming hard and fast now, noticing from the corners of her eyes the way they all veered away from her, like there was an invisible barrier between her and the world. Whether they were afraid of the way her grief ripped through the air or just of _her_ , she did not know. “Until I find a body or evidence to suggest otherwise – he is _alive_. And we’re going to find him, even if it takes _years_ , because you’re right, Nate. You _don’t_ belong here. You’ve just got here, so let me tell you this once,” Sara barked, her tone dangerous and silky. She was very close to him now, close enough for him to see the darkness in her eyes; she had burned away the moment of loud fury, leaving only the cold, detached anger in its place. “His name was _Rip Hunter_. He was _our_ Captain, and this was _his_ ship. And he was my – he was _our_ friend. Not yours. So you don’t get to say anything about him.”

Nate was blinking rapidly, looking very much as though the floor swallowing him up at that moment would be an improvement on having to stay taking the full brunt of her anger. Shaking, he nodded.

“I – I’m sorry, Sara. I didn’t mean to-”

“Rip Hunter was a good man,” Sara said loudly, turning away from him to consider the entire crew. Each time one of them met her gaze, she held it until they looked away. The cold anger was scarier than the bright anger, she had decided. It was unpredictable. “None of you forget it. Get out of here.”

For a stunned second, the team just looked at her. No one seemed to breathe, or blink, or move at all. They just looked at her, and she didn’t like what she saw in their eyes – there was that look again, people seeing her as an animal, something soulless and violent and _dark_. She thought she was past seeing that expression. In the past year, on this ship, she had been around people who were becoming like a family to her, who knew what she was – _who_ she was – and stopped fearing her. Now, it was back, sharp as ever, stinging her.

Thinking back, the only person on the Waverider who had never looked at her in that way was Rip. Even in the face of her rage, even when he learned the truth of her bloodlust, even when she held a knife to his throat, more than once – his gaze remained steady, and he never looked afraid of her. There had never been that fear mixed with disgust in her eyes when he looked at her, only a confident, cool understanding; compassion, even.

The memory of this only made her miss him more acutely, and she slumped where she stood, sucking in a great breath. Blowing the air noisily out of her mouth, she turned away from them, bracing one hand against the desk as the other rubbed over her tired eyes, regret plunging her into a sudden sickness; Sara felt the anger drain out of her and sink into the floor. She had exploded, and they were all potential targets for the debris, Nate just being the unlucky one to take the full force of it.

She wasn’t mad, not really. They just _cared_.

“I’m sorry,” she said, not looking at them. “I’m just tired, that’s all . . . Although we didn’t know Rip for very long, we went through a lot with him, and he _was_ my friend, and I just – I feel like we should have found him by now.” Sara turned, leaning back against the desk now, subdued as she faced them, trying very hard not to meet anyone’s eye. “The more time goes by, the less chance we have of ever finding him. I’m not stupid, I know that. And I know he’s probably dead – but I’m not ready to give up, not yet. Because when L-laurel died, I didn’t know until it was too late. All I had was a grave and nothing left to fight. When Snart died, it was his choice, and there was no way to save him. But this time – Rip could still be out there, and I can do something about that. Do you understand? This time, there’s hope. And that means _so much_ to me-”

She broke off, swiping at her eyes with her hands. The tears fell thick and fast, almost without her realising; she wiped them away, as eager to leave as they were to come. Her voice cracked on her sister’s name. It hadn’t done that in a while. Sara spoke the painful truth, even though it carved out her insides.

“After losing so many people, I just wanted to _save_ someone. Just one,” she flicked her hair out of her eyes, finally looking up at them all. “That’s why I keep watching it. That’s why I have to find Rip. And I _am_ sorry, Nate. I didn’t mean to bite your head off. It’s just . . . it’s hard, trying to be a hero when I can’t even save the people I care about, let alone everyone else.”

She looked at Nate’s face then, whose face had twisted into an expression of sympathy, and he nodded slightly at her words. “I’m sorry, too. I never knew Captain Hunter, and I shouldn’t have spoken about him that way. But I think I’d quite like to meet him, now – as long as you want to keep looking, I’m with you.”

“Thank you,” Sara whispered, returning his nod. It meant a lot.

“We all are,” Jax confirmed, approaching her. A gentle hand came to rest on her arm, and a face so gentle and benevolent was close to her own, quietly comforting. “We all miss Rip, and we’re going to find him together. You’re our captain, Sara. Whatever happens, we’re on your side. We just didn’t want you to think that you were alone, if you were hurting.”

“I know, I know,” she nodded, letting him pull her closer, until the arm was slung around her shoulders, squeezing in a half-hug. Jax was good like that. Her brother. Her voice was shaky, barely a breath. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t ever have to apologise, not to us,” he affirmed, as the rest of the team began to shift forwards, getting closer to her. The bubble burst, and they were there, real people, and the office was so full of life that the ghost of Rip’s message seemed far away.

*

It was better, and then it wasn’t, and Sara had both good and bad days as the weeks stretched by. That was life, she supposed. “ _To live the next day_ ”. Even if it were harder than the last, you got up, looked the world in the eye, and faced it anyway. And then the next day came, and the next, and the next, until eventually you could smile again.

They found Rip on a Wednesday afternoon.

Darkh and the speedster were now calling themselves the ‘Legion of Doom’. Sara and her team found that out as they fought them, and then there was a lot of screaming and running and fighting for their lives, at which point they stumbled into a cell block with a single occupant. Half-dead, barely able to walk, Rip had escaped with them by inches, the Waverider taking heavier damage than was probably safe as they sped away. After that, he had collapsed.

That was almost a week ago. Since then, Rip had been comatose in the med-bay.

The last thing Sara expected was for him to walk right into his office, still gaunt and weak looking, but smiling in a way that reached his eyes at the sight of her at the desk. Sara froze as he entered, crossing right through the space his projection had loomed over her like a dark cloud for so many months, like it was nothing, and standing in front of her.

“I knew it would be you,” he said softly, one hand resting on the table between them for stability. He said nothing else. Sara was only aware that she was standing when she was moving towards him, walking around the desk to stand beside him, as Rip turned to keep her in his sights, eyes amused as they followed her. He looked _proud_.

“Rip . . .” she said, unable to form any words but his name. Sara fumbled over them for a minute before shaking herself, eyes sharpening from their dulled shock to a sharp concern. “You should be in bed! You’re supposed to be resting, Gideon said . . . What are you doing here?”

“I’ve been a prisoner for months,” he replied, face clouding for a heartbeat at memories they had only guessed at so far. “I woke up and - I don’t know, really. I just wanted to walk somewhere freely. And so I came here.” Rip looked around the office, eyes lingering on his maps and books, a smile quirking his lips up once more. “I’ve missed it here, Sara. The Waverider. I saw her in my _dreams_.”

Sara managed a watery smile. Rip’s eyes were in the stars, in dreams, but the pain that appeared on his face was undoubtable. Whatever he had been through, it was nothing good. He was not a man made to be caged.

“You should sit,” Sara said instead, taking a hold of his arm. Rip was still very weak, so he let her lead him across the room to the chair she had sat in to watch his message all those times, still dented perfectly to his shape. He smiled as he sat, gratefully, still looking in awe around the room as if he couldn’t believe he were really there. And he just fit there. This room was his, and he was _home_.

“What are you smiling at?”

“Nothing,” Sara shook her head, straightening as he sat. “It’s just . . . welcome home, Rip. It’s good to see you here again.”

“So you missed me?” Rip teased, but he was smiling, too.

“Maybe,” she replied, tongue sticking out between her teeth as she pulled a face. Straightening, Sara moved quickly to the door, remembering something important. Stopping at the coat-stand, she returned to his side a moment later, Rip’s old brown coat in her hands; when Rip saw it, his face dropped in shock, even as she handed it to him. Rip looked from the coat to Sara, awed, so she shrugged and answered. “I found it, not long after you’d . . . after you were gone. It was so strange to picture you without it,” she smiled at him, adding with a wink, “Thought it was worth keeping safe.”

Rip looked astounded. Slowly, he stood, and Sara helped guide the sleeves to his hands as he shrugged on the coat. Shaking to settle it onto his shoulders twice, his hands smoothed from his collar down the coat, falling to his sides as he turned to her again, twinkle back in his eyes. Although underneath, he still wore the plain white t-shirt that replaced the rags they found him in, the coat making the man: like some mythical figure, it restored him before her eyes, and Rip seemed to stand a little taller with the coat on his back.

“What do you think?” he asked, twisting so the coat tails flew around his knees. He grinned up at her, for the first time seeming himself again, and Sara couldn’t help but smile brightly back, the grin on her face so wide her cheeks ached.

“Now there’s the Rip Hunter I know,” she answered, and he practically glowed at her words. “Looking good, Captain.”

“I can’t believe you kept this,” he said faintly, looking down at the coat still even as she prodded him in the chest, gesturing for him to sit again. Doing so, he shook his head in disbelief, still astounded; he nodded at her once, sincerely, something deep in his gaze as he looked up at her. “Thank you for saving me. I would never have escaped that place without you . . . I had tried, of course. I didn’t mean to be gone for so long. I’m sorry about that.”

She nodded, “I know. What happened?”

“Thawne took me. He needed a Time Sphere, and well – I invented them. I tried resisting, but-” Rip flinched, dropping his gaze. “Ah, we’ll say he has ways of _persuading_ people. I took as long as I could making the sphere, buying time; but I couldn’t stall forever. Once it was done, he took me to the place you found me and put me in a cell. I think it’s their headquarters. He brought Darkh with the Time Sphere not long afterwards . . . I’m sorry, Sara. I tried to find a way to get to Darkh, but they caught me-”

“Shhh,” Sara soothed, kneeling quickly down beside the chair. Her hand came to rest over his arm, leaning closer to Rip as she spoke. “That doesn’t matter now, you’re safe – that’s what counts. I – I was blinded by revenge. I missed what mattered: people. People who I could still keep safe, _right in front of me_ \- not killing Darkh.”

“But Laurel-”

“Never wanted me to be a killer,” Sara admitted, biting her lip. She hated how weak she felt at the mention of her sister even now, and was happily surprised when Rip caught her hand before she could fall too far into her thoughts, taking it in his own and squeezing it. Blinking up at him, she sent him a grateful look. “I am still going to try and save Laurel. But not by killing; and not by forgetting to live my own life. She wouldn’t want that.”

“I’ll help you,” Rip promised, not hesitating for a moment. “Saving Laurel, I mean. If that is what you want to do, I’ll go with you. Whatever it takes. I think all this time alone gave _me_ some perspective, too – time wants to happen. I’ve said it before. So while it is our duty to protect the established order, I also trust time to heal itself where it needs to. And what really matters is holding on to people, and not letting them go.” The hands around her own tightened for a moment, and Sara found herself smiling back as Rip’s face turned gentle in her own direction, weakly laughing at the way he lifted up their hands. She was only aware that she was crying because of a warmth on her face, which Rip gently brushed away as he continued. “That’s the only lasting thing in time: love. So if you want to go save Laurel, that will be our new mission. The only one that matters.”

“We have to stop the Legion of Doom,” Sara protested, but she was still smiling. “And we will; now we have you back.”

“Oh, you could have done it without me. _Easily_.”

“No,” Sara shook her head, laughing and crying. “I needed you. But,” she added, “when we have beaten them, and I know we will now – yes. If you will help me to save my sister . . . I can’t even say how much that means. If we can save Laurel-”

“If there is a way, we will find it,” Rip vowed, “should we have to go to the gates of the afterlife themselves.”

Sara didn’t remember moving afterwards. But the next time she blinked, her arms were around Rip’s neck, her chin on his shoulder as she hugged him tightly, shaking and laughing as he swayed slightly from the impact, a hesitant hand landing on her back a moment later. Rip returned the embrace, murmuring into the crook of her neck.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to realise that.”

Leaning back, her face a few inches away from his, close enough that everything was blurred but the warmth in his eyes, Sara smiled, a real, genuine smile. “I suppose it’s a good thing we have all the time in the world, then, _Time Master_.”

He laughed shallowly. “There are no more Time Masters.”

“No,” Sara shook her head. “But there’s _us_. That’s enough.”

“Lucky timeline,” Rip replied, head tilted to one side, expression turning soft.

Sara countered, matching him. “Lucky us.”

They smiled, and two lonely wanderers found home again, right where they were.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all enjoyed :) Title from James Shirley! please comment + remember I'm always taking TC requests on tumblr @captainriphunter.


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